


Things You Can Touch

by raven_aorla



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Fluff and Feels, Gen, in the second part he meets Claire and Foggy and Page, kinkmeme fill, neurodivergence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-10
Updated: 2015-05-13
Packaged: 2018-03-29 23:13:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3914233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raven_aorla/pseuds/raven_aorla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Melvin is happy not to make things for scary people anymore. He promised not to tell Betsy about Mr. Daredevil, but he likes helping Mr. Daredevil do more good things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt said to completely disregard comics canon, and interpret Melvin's likely neurodivergence however you wished. Please let me know if you find anything problematic. Also these aren't my characters, etc.
> 
> On a less serious note, SWEET GIFTED BABY DESERVES ALL THE CHOCOLATE MILK AND CUDDLES.

Betsy's going to visit today. Melvin always likes seeing her, but this is the first time in a long time that he isn't going to be scared too. For a long time, whenever he saw Betsy he kept thinking about the people who said they were going to hurt her if he didn't make things for them. Smiling was harder then.

Melvin gets scared and confused talking to people who aren't Betsy a lot of the time. Not her, because she doesn't get mad at him when he does something wrong and doesn't know why. He's not good at remembering what faces look like, but he always knows it's her because of her voice and how she talks. She talks slowly in a friendly way, not like she thinks he's stupid, but like she's thinking hard about what she's saying and wants him to know exactly what she's thinking. He likes that. He does that a lot too. 

He has a lot of words inside him but it's hard to know where to put them. Things aren't like that. Real things you can touch, he means. Melvin's little rooms in his little apartment are always very neat. When your head gets jumbled it's nice to have everything outside in the place it's supposed to be. 

Today he finished all his work. He doesn't have as much work to do now that Mr. Fisk is in jail. He took some of the tools from their workshop before he left it forever. He asked Mr. Daredevil if Mr. Daredevil thought that was bad. 

Mr. Daredevil was visiting because he wanted to know if the inside of the costume could feel a little softer maybe. Melvin put some softer lining inside, that wouldn't get too hot and would help sweat not stick to skin. Sometimes when Melvin doesn't feel so good he likes to touch soft things, and it was nice to know even brave people like Mr. Daredevil sometimes make themselves feel better the same way.

When Melvin asked that, he said he would give the tools back if that was a bad thing to have done. He usually asks Betsy when he thinks he might have done something bad. But Mr. Daredevil says Betsy will be safer if she doesn't know about Mr. Fisk or about Mr. Daredevil either. And that makes sense. So he asked Mr. Daredevil about the tools and Mr. Daredevil had a little quiet laugh, not like a "vigilante" like the news calls him but like a normal guy talking to a normal friend. He said Melvin was fine. He didn't have time to listen to Melvin talk about the tools and their names and the cool stuff they could do, but he was nice about how he said it and he didn't get mad at Melvin for being excited.

Betsy's coming in an hour. Melvin's too excited to do much. He's not going to tell her why today is special, but that doesn't make it not special. He could tell her he's excited because today she's going to show him how to go into a shop to buy ice cream even when there are so many flavors and a lot of people, and how to find the kinds he likes even when all the labels are small and the ice creams sometimes have weird names, and how he can do stuff to feel better if he gets scared. It wouldn't be a lie. He's excited about that too.

Today Melvin has oil on his hands and two new band-aids. He doesn't mind getting hurt a little bit when he's making not-scary things. Some people who weren't scary paid him a bunch of money to make them armor. They aren't going to use the armor to go out and hurt people. They're going to wear it to pretend to be knights and have fun. They gave him tickets to the tournament they're going to have, riding horses in the armor he made to keep them safe while they have fun, but he isn't sure he'd feel okay riding in a car for three hours to get to the place where it's going to happen. Maybe he can ask Betsy about what to do if he gets scared being in a little box for a long time like that.

Mr. Daredevil does kind of wear the armor to go out and hurt people, but he only hurts bad people who hurt other people a lot worse. Melvin is proud that things he made will help Mr. Daredevil not get hurt as much anymore. 

When they met, Melvin was really really scared Mr. Daredevil was bad, or that Mr. Daredevil thought he was bad, but Mr. Daredevil is good at listening and knowing what Melvin means.

Not as good as Betsy, but nobody else is.

This is a lot of things-you-can't-touch stuff to think about, and Melvin doesn't want to be tired when Betsy comes. So he gets some Yoo-Hoo out of the fridge and sits at the kitchen table to read his favorite Captain America comic again. 

When he was a kid playing pretend, all the boys wanted to be Captain America . Not Melvin, though. Melvin wanted to be Howard Stark and make Captain America's shield and help Captain America be safe. He painted an old Frisbee and everything, and gave it to the one boy at school who didn't call him a dummy. Melvin thinks that boy was named Frank or Frog or something, but he's not good with names.

Melvin smiles and turns the page, waiting for the knock on his door.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Four conversations Melvin Potter had with a friend of Mr. Daredevil.

Claire:

"Hello. I don't know this phone number, so that means I don't know who you are. If you are trying to make me buy things, I don't need to buy more things except food and stuff like that. And maybe new needlenose pliers."

"Please look out the peephole and unlock the door."

"What? I don't understand...oh. Oh no. Oh nononono. I'll let you in."

"Thank you so much. Help me get him on the sofa." 

"He's not dead, right?"

"No. He's hurt. It isn't too bad, thanks to your work, but he hurt his...how do I explain...uh, he hurt himself in a way that he can't take the armor off himself. I help him when he's hurt, but his armor is new and..."

"I can't tell what he's saying!"

"He's in a lot of pain right now, so he can't talk well. I don't know how to take all the armor off him. Can you help? I can do the parts on his face. Just show me how to get this bit off. And this bit."

"I can help you take them off, but then I'm going to my room until you're done doing doctor things...here's a pillow...because when I see lots of it I throw up. Here's the first part. See the clasp? I know you're going to do doctor things because of your mask. Okay, this has a fastening here, here, here, here. I know he doesn't want me to see his face. Ohhhhhhh I need to go to my room now. Tell me when to come out."

"I will. Thank you again."

 

2\. Foggy

"See, Melvin? Here's the Captain America shield you made me when we were ten. It's really me. I'm a lawyer now, like I said."

"Yes! You still have it! It looks really good. The paint was just acrylic and I didn't know back then about varnish and things..."

"Well, yeah, buddy, you were just a kid. I remember how you fixed my toy truck, too. I thought you were the greatest. I felt bad about not talking to you anymore after we went to different middle schools."

"It's okay. You were nice to me and that was important. I'm sorry I forgot your face and your name. I don't remember faces and I only remember the names of people I see a lot, or that wear the same clothes every time I see them. Like in cartoons."

"Let's agree that we're both awesome and stop apologizing."

"Um, okay?"

"Now that I proved that I'm your friend, like I promised, please come with me. My friends Matt and Karen and I are going to make sure that the police know how wrong they are for thinking you're a criminal."

"Are we walking or taking a cab? I don't like taking cabs for a long time. They're small and the driver gets mad if you forgot your wallet because you were thinking about other stuff."

"We're walking. It's really close."

"I'll get my bag. Should I bring my letter from the Disability Office? Betsy says that if I have to talk to doctors or police or lawyers I should take the letter. I mean, you're my friend so I think you're not a normal lawyer, but there's the other. Um. I'll bring it."

"Sounds good. Do you have Betsy's phone number?"

"Uh huh. Should I call her? She might be busy helping other people like me but she says I can leave a message and she'll call me back in one day or less. She does, too."

"No, it's fine, it's good, we'll call her from the office. Let's go."

"How did you know I needed a lawyer, Foggy? I don't talk to people much if they're not Betsy or Grandma or they want me to make things for them."

"That, uh, Daredevil guy. He told me some people told the police you made things for Fisk, and you needed help explaining to the police that you only worked for Fisk because you were afraid not to."

"I said no and no and no and then they said they were gonna hurt Betsy so I said yes and I didn't want to I really -"

"Hey, it's okay. Stop and breathe. I believe you, and we're going to fix this."

 

3\. Karen

"I brought you some water. You've been busy."

"Thank you, Miss Page. Your printers are very old. I haven't seen a Braille one before. I like it. Hand me the number three screwdriver, please?"

"Sorry, I don't know which one that is."

"Oh. Sorry. It's this one. I call the tools different numbers in my head. I forget other people don't know what the numbers are."

"Foggy keeps getting confused when I ask him about different colors we could paint the walls - I think taupe would be nice, but he doesn't know which is taupe and which is beige. Maybe it's a little like that. Also, please call me Karen."

"Okay. Um. Karen, your printer-for-people-who-see works now, I think. There's some kind of jam in this Braille one. Jam like a thing that's stuck, not like you'd put on toast. That confused me for a long time."

"I don't think traffic jam would taste great."

"No. Thank you for letting me fix the printers and the air conditioning in your office. I know that's a weird thing to say. But Foggy and Matt are talking to police and a judge and I don't want to think about what they're saying right now. If I can make things or fix things, I don't think about things I don't want to think about."

"Melvin, do you like hugs?"

"I like hugs from nice people if they aren't a surprise."

"Can I hug you?"

"Yeah."

 

4\. Matt

"Hi, can I come in?"

"Of course. I thought you'd gone home."

"I did go part of the way. I was going to celebrate by watching TV and having some cake by myself. Some kinds of happy are nice with other people and some kinds of happy are nicer by myself. I'm happy you and Foggy and Karen talked to the police and now I'm not in trouble. But it's tired happy, and that kind of happy is better alone and quiet."

"But you came back."

"Oh, right, sorry. Can I sit? Thank you. I think Foggy and Karen are gone now. If they aren't gone I can whisper."

"They went home. You sound nervous. Are you all right?"

"When the lights go out, you can still tell where everything is, because you can't see anyway."

"Yes."

"I can't remember faces, Matt. I see them when I look at them, but the parts don't put themselves together in my brain. I can see a smile or a frown, or if someone's crying, but the rest is too hard for me. Sometimes I forget what color their eyes or hair are. It doesn't stick. So if I want to tell if a person is someone I know, I have to look at other things, or listen. I don't try as hard with most people because it's tiring, but if someone is very important I look and listen to everything. I want to know them when they're there."

"...Go on."

"When you walk into a room, Matt, you tilt your head the way - the way Mr. Daredevil does, when he walks in a room. When you laugh a small laugh, not a big one, it sounds like how he laughs. When you're tired, you walk the way he does when he's tired. You cough the same and sneeze the same. When you pick up your cane, sometimes you make the little 'urgh' sound a kid does when he doesn't want to wear a seatbelt in a car but his grandma says he has to. Mr. Daredevil made that sound when the lady helping him when he was hurt told him to rest tomorrow. I hope you did rest, because I think you're Mr. Daredevil."

"Um."

"I won't tell anybody. Mr. Daredevil and Mr. Matt Murdock have both helped me, and you both do good things. If you are the same person but it's safer for other people not to know that, I won't tell anybody ever. I bet other people don't think you can do stuff they can't do. All they think about is what you can't do that they can."

"You certainly know how that feels."

"Yeah. You're not mad, right?"

"No, though I think I need your help learning how to be more careful."

"We all need help sometimes. I - I like that you know I can give help too."


End file.
